Eric keeps mandates
But new mayor says he’ll explain them better
After weeks of uncertainty over how he would deal with it, Eric Adams announced Thursday that he will as mayor keep the city’s private sector coronavirus vaccine mandate in place and potentially roll out additional immunization requirements for schools and other high-risk settings.
The private sector mandate — implemented by outgoing Mayor de Blasio on Monday — is an “imperative” weapon in fighting a recent explosion of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations driven by the omicron variant, Adams said during a briefing at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
“We’re going to keep that in place. We spoke with our business leaders today to let them know,” said Adams, who is set to be sworn in as the city’s next mayor shortly after midnight Friday.
But on the flipside, Adams — who for weeks played coy on whether he would keep the mandate — took a swipe at de Blasio for doing a poor job at explaining the rule to the roughly 184,000 private businesses whose employees are covered by it.
“I am going to really expand on the communication and education. I don’t believe we need to be heavy-handed with our businesses. COVID has been heavy-handed enough,” Adams said.
“And I believe, if there was one critique, as I stated, I think that the mayor in a state of urgency with which he was faced — we could’ve all done a better job at communicating with our various stakeholders.”
The private sector mandate, the most sweeping of its kind when announced by de Blasio in early December, has ruffled feathers among business leaders who argue it may drive down the city’s economy again.
To assuage such concerns, de Blasio said earlier this week that his administration would not slap fines on business owners as soon as a violation is detected. Rather, he said inspectors would seek to “educate and correct” noncompliant businesses and only levy fines against those that “flatly refuse” to abide.
Despite knocking de Blasio’s communication skills, Adams said in Thursday’s briefing that he actually has a very similar idea in mind.
“We will fine those businesses that are recklessly not complying and just refusing to do so,” he said. “We’re going to use a light-handed approach.”
Asked about Adams’ critique later in the day, de Blasio said that if he fell short as an interlocutor, it was because he had to act with “breathtaking speed” as omicron bore down on the city.
“What we needed to do was move quickly to get ahead of it, so I called a preemptive strike. When you’re doing a preemptive strike, you don’t get to lay all the ground work you might ideally like to,” he said.
In addition to keeping the private sector policy, Adams announced he is exploring the possibility of making coronavirus booster shots part of all existing vaccine mandates, including those covering municipal workers and activities like indoor dining and fitness.
“That is our best tool in the arsenal,” Adams said, noting that research has shown boosters significantly decrease the risk of getting seriously ill or hospitalized due to COVID-19.
Since being detected in Africa in November, omicron has ravaged New York, with 22% of tests conducted in the state in the 24-hour period ending Thursday morning coming back positive, according to Health Department data. Alarmingly, hospitalization and death rates are ticking up as well, with 97 New Yorkers perishing from the virus in the previous 24-hour period, the highest toll since February.
Despite the COVID resurgence, the city is forging ahead with reopening public schools at full capacity next week.
Adams, who joined de Blasio earlier this week in announcing the full-blown return to school, pledged to follow through on the outgoing mayor’s plan to beef up testing for students and teachers in order to keep them in class as much as possible.
The incoming mayor also said he is instructing his health team to look into mandating coronavirus vaccinations for students — a step de Blasio shied away from — though he acknowledged Gov. Hochul would have to sign off on such a policy, which likely could not take effect until the fall semester.
Adams also said a student mandate is not necessary at the moment. “We don’t believe the rates in schools call for that,” he said.
Ostensibly, the only concrete private sector policy shift Adams unveiled Thursday entailed assigning outreach on the issue to “a dedicated unit” who will “work with small businesses, stakeholders and the mayor’s corporate engagement committee to help implement the mandate,” according to a fact-sheet from his transition team.
Under de Blasio, by contrast, outreach on the mandate has largely been conducted by the city Health Department.
The mandate requires in-person employees at all private businesses in the city — from corner bodegas to multinational banks — to get vaccinated against COVID-19, though exceptions can be granted for documented religious and health reasons.
Looking at other aspects of the city’s pandemic response, Adams said his administration will distribute hundreds of thousands of free masks to New Yorkers next month and continue to beef up access to testing by opening more sites, all with the goal of preventing a return to large-scale shutdowns.
“That’s the goal,” Adams said. “We can’t shut down our city again.”